


Prelude to Rising

by Meatball42



Series: Rare Pairs [54]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brother-Sister Relationships, F/M, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-14 01:32:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12996930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: When the nice CIA lady came to invite Charles to America, he and Raven tittered and sent her on her way. They had a plan- and nothing and no one was going to interfere with it.





	Prelude to Rising

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally the first section of a timey-wimey epic I had planned, but I ended up not staying in the fandom very long. Instead, it can be read as happening right before the events of canon.

When the nice CIA lady came to invite Charles to America, he and Raven tittered and sent her on her way. They had a plan- and nothing and no one was going to interfere with it.

~ ~ * ~ ~

Twirling a pen between his fingers, Charles gazed absent-mindedly around the dim interior of his study and woke up his ever-present line of communication to his sister. He sensed that she was sitting in a firm, padded chair less than a mile away, and was relaxed and content. _‘I’m trying to decide at which University we should work for the rest of our lives, or at least the next few years,’_ he said grandiosly, with no preamble.

Without looking up from her reading, Raven replied. _‘Where are you thinking?’_ In the back of Charles’s mind, the article she was analyzing from the _Journal of Genetics_ was idly being stored to his memory.

_‘Columbia’s offer is quite generous, but there’s also Cambridge [a less prestigious entry to a more prestigious institution] and Stanford [don’t even]--’_

_‘Stanford, really?’_ The _Journal_ dipped, and the austere trappings of the Old Bodleian Library behind it glowed in the afternoon’s golden light. Charles looked around the increasingly stuffy and messy flat he’d barely left in days and basked in Raven’s surroundings vicariously.

 _‘I like Stanford,’_ he said, somewhat on the defensive.

_‘It was barely founded in the nineteenth century.’_

_‘It’s up-and-coming! Strong research is coming out of California these days, sister-mine.’_

_‘Small swimsuits are coming out of California these days,’_ she shot back, a mental smirk coloring the thought.

He refused to let the blush come through, though of course Raven would guess. _‘I think... I want something new.’_

On the far side of the campus, Raven turned the page in the _Journal_ by habit: there were humans all around, and it wouldn’t do for anyone to notice her staring off into space. _‘You really want to go back to America? Enough that... [New York]?’_

Her mental shielding was by far practised enough to keep back the flurry of images and memories, but her words were undoubtedly home-tinged in that moment, shadowy and heads-down and sweaty palms clasped close. In the safety of their flat, Charles abandoned the formally-sealed correspondence at his desk and rose to fix a spot of tea. He considered his next words. In the library, in his head, Raven waited.

 _‘If we were to choose Columbia,’_ he said eventually, ‘ _we would live in the city.’_

 _‘I didn’t much like Boston,’_ Raven grumbled, but it was quiet, leaving room for Charles to overrule her.

_‘I don’t ever want to live in the Manor again. We could get a place in the Chelsea neighborhood, I’ve heard it’s both smart and sophisticated.’_

A wordless pulse of acceptance greeted his first statement, and his sister moved naturally onwards to bickering. _‘Another way of saying starving artists and those who fashion themselves radical. Any word of “odd happenings?”’_

Charles glared at the teapot that was doing its level best to resist a boil. _‘None that I’ve been able to scrape from the local papers. Anything truly interesting seems confined to Greenwich Village.’_

_‘...Greenwich… Village?’_

_‘I know it’s etymologically inaccurate, Raven, yes,’_ Charles said tiredly. He didn’t care for grammar half as much as his sister.

She resettled the _Journal_ on her lap with a distinctly haughty air. _‘If you’re living somewhere, you could at least call it by its proper name--’_

_‘If we move there, I’m sure the locals would love to be instructed. Is this a vote for Columbia, then?’_

Raven withdrew mentally, her thoughts flashing blue to his senses. Charles left her to her arithmetic, finally able to pour the hot water and start steeping. He took it back to the sitting room to wait, and after a moment’s thought, threw open the heavy curtains that usually blocked both the warm afternoon light and the view to the house next door. Settling in his preferred spot on the couch with a sigh and a squeak of springs, Charles contemplated the outside world.

The obvious downside to either of the American universities was population. Stanford and its surrounds had roughly the same number of inhabitants as Boston, which was-- though of course Charles hated to admit it-- rather frightening. One of the foremost reasons behind his early graduation from Harvard was the desire to leave such a crowded, loud, and overall _rude_ city. Although his powers and control had grown exponentially in the years intervening, Charles still felt a hint of doubt around Stanford that, somehow, wasn’t present when he imagined living in New York City.

In his childhood, of course, Charles’s visits to the city had been overwhelming and were quickly curtailed. The only frame of reference he had for it was Raven’s memory of standing beside a steam-ship when its horn went off.

Charles sipped his tea, and imagined the challenge of living, thinking, working, inside a veritable hurricane of people. Over seven and a half million minds, dozens of languages, thousands of trades, and all for him to read and listen and _learn_. The challenge! The freshness of the feat! It would be just the change he could sense that the pair of them needed. The only better place would be London, because it was undoubtedly more civilized, but no Universities from the Empire’s capital had made the short-list, more’s the pity.

Raven snorted at him from the back of his head. _‘Your tea.’_

Coming back to his body, Charles made what was surely a mortifying expression of disgust, swallowed the dregs he’d just sipped, and set his mug aside briskly. _‘Thanks for that. What would I do without you?’_

 _‘Wither and die,’_ she said, and not without basis. _‘Could I reference some of your classes?’_

_‘Of course, but try not to disturb me?’_

The tickle behind his ears told Charles that his sister was accessing his memories, and he grimaced. _‘I know what I’m doing. Don’t mind me!’_ Raven scolded.

 _‘[Hmph].’_ Cambridge, of course, had been their plan all along-- Oxford and Harvard ruled out to keep Raven’s slow aging from being put under scrutiny. When their plan progressed in the coming years and they published Charles’s research on mutation and evolution, Raven’s applications of his research to medical science, their dual research in the soft sciences- from which pedestal would the humans accept the truth better than one of their own most-respected institutions? And where better to prove the aptitudes of mutants than one of the premier research universities in the world? The heights to which they could raise their fellow mutants, the honors they would bestow upon the fledgling race, the power their voices would have to protect and guide this latest stage of evolution...

Charles closed his eyes and basked in the golden glow that warmed his skin, sinking into the cushions. This shared dream of his and Raven’s was a refuge they’d begun to construct before Raven hit double-digits, and they had not deviated from the path laid before them. Now, then, was the first time either of them had suggested a change, and it was for Charles’ selfish desire to explore and expand his power; something Raven was not yet free to do.

Once they’d gained a foothold in academia, that was when Raven would reveal herself. It might take decades, but they’d agreed it was the best plan: only when their research was invaluable, when they were the undeniable experts in their fields, would the world see that a mutant had accomplished so much. None would be able to denounce their achievements, the achievements of their race.

And maybe, Charles thought-- a blue spark of hope springing from the pools of cynicism within-- when they did show the world who Raven really was (never to show Charles’s power, their most powerful defence always held back), New York would be the most accepting place to be.

 _‘I see you’ve decided,’_ she said calmly. The sensation of a hand brushing over his hair, almost too faint to be noticed, wafted across to his mind.

_‘Of course not, what-- er, what do you think?’_

Raven laughed. Out loud, at a _Journal of Genetics_ , in a library. Oh well, they were going to leave in a few days anyway. _‘New York it is.’_

~ ~ * ~ ~

Charles accepted the position in New York. He and Raven both had friends to whom they farewelled and promised to write, accounts that needed transferring, and the new flat needed leasing. But, much like Raven’s mutation, everything was acting. No one knew of their true plans, or any personal thoughts that wouldn’t further the goal of mutant ascendance. Even their hobbies and casual interests had been carefully chosen.

It didn’t really hit Raven until they arrived in New York, a city of millions and no one to greet them. The friends she left behind knew her as Raven Xavier, the younger sister of Charles Xavier, a medical student, a football fan, a lover of Shelley, a human. No one knew who she really was. None of the Oxford librarians who greeted her knew that she liked to conduct advanced chemistry experiments in her spare time. None of the boys who offered to carry her books to lecture knew that she’d dissected human brains in the biology labs looking for the secrets of their inferiority. None of the tenured professors who Charles overheard undressing her in their minds knew that she had at least twenty IQ points on any of them.

Oxford had never been home. Harvard had never been home. Westchester had barely been home.

They arrived at the new flat late enough that they only bothered setting up the bed before falling into it together. However exhausted from travel, it took only a few inquiring brushes of mind before they were held close in each other’s arms atop the sheets. When Charles scratched down the sensitive scales on her thigh, when he moved inside her so slowly Raven realized he’d gotten lost in her mind again and had to roll him over onto his back to keep things moving, when he came back to the moment as she pinched his nipple til he squealed, Raven laughed and remembered why she’d never wanted for home since she met him.

~ ~ * ~ ~

The war started in October.

There was mass emigration from the cities. Many of those who could fled to other countries. With Raven’s fluency and Charles’s ability to translate with his gift, they considered waiting it out in Québec or Normandie. After some consideration, however, they decided that even politicians would realize the stupidity of actually initializing mutually assured destruction, and decided to stick out Charles’s first semester as an Assistant Professor at Columbia.

It was Thanksgiving when the first bombs fell.

~ ~ * ~ ~

The bulky protective suit squeaked like an agonized lab rat as Charles made his way through the too-familiar halls of his childhood home. He squinted to see his path with all the ambient light stifled by blackout curtains; only a weak lantern helped him keep his tray steady. The stairs down to the bunker proved even more difficult, but Charles had had quite a bit of practice in the last few weeks, and made it down without dropping a thing.

One he passed the blast door and set the tray on a table, Charles removed the helmet and gauntlets and closed the thick metal door to the outside world. Without the glowing buttons beyond, the bunker was a hellish place, filled as it was with deep blue suffering and nauseating orange lamps. Charles stripped himself of the protective suit and went about quietly preparing the iodine shot he’d concocted in his father’s laboratory.

Charles approached his sister, who looked like she was sprawled across their cot in a dead faint, rather than tucked in carefully as he’d left her. She shivered in her sleep, moaning quietly, and his heart broke between the prospect of letting her suffer like this and waking her up to suffer more.

_‘Raven, my [partner love sister friend], it’s time for your medicine.’_

He knelt on the bed, cautious with the syringe. Jostling the cot led to Raven cracking her eyes, a yellow glint in the darkness. She let her arm fall open onto the blankets. The limb flopped like that of a cadaver. _‘Go ahead.’_

Using Raven’s medical experience as guide, he searched for her vein and inserted the syringe.

_‘Do you think it’s going to make any difference?’_

He removed the needle and quickly moved to sterilize and store it. _‘I know it will.’_

_‘Don’t lie to me, [dearest brother].’_

“What else do I have?” When he turned back to the bed, she was watching him. “Yes, I know it will help you, because if it does not, there is nothing.”

Charles slipped under the covers. His hand found Raven’s waist and tugged them together, away from the cold, dark edges of the bed.

_‘You have to promise me to keep living.’_

“You know that’s not possible.”

_‘I know you. You can do anything.’_

God, she actually believed it. Raven’s conviction was stronger than any Charles had ever felt. She gave him the strength to believe in and fight for their destiny. But sometimes, she was hard-headed and refused to see facts, and this was clearly one of those times. “You are my world,” Charles whispered. His breath wet the clammy skin of her neck, chilled to cobalt in the stone tunnel. “What would I even want to do without you beside me?”

_‘Find that Shaw for me and punch him in the face.’_

He tried to chuckle, in his head, for her. On the outside, he breathed in deeply. The smell of her death had nearly overtaken the natural smell of her life. “Why are you talking like this? It’s been weeks, you’re still here.”

 _‘Because...’_ Raven tried to face him, but her muscles shook and failed. Reading her intent, Charles placed his hands on her hips and her ribcage and turned her body under the blankets. It was far too easy after all the weight she’d lost. _‘[Brother lover friend], I think this is it.’_

 _‘You can’t!’_ His breath snagged terribly in his throat and came out as a sob. _‘What if they’re right! What if the humans have all died, and the others like us have survived? You would miss all of that for a bit of… a bit of influenza?’_

 _‘Don’t play stupid, it isn’t becoming,’_ Raven chided, amused through her exhaustion. _‘If I’m dying, other mutants will be too. Shaw and his cronies are wrong. And I never get sick. This isn’t some normal human disease, [love]. This is it.’_

 _‘You can’t leave me. Do you understand?’_ Charles’s hand tightened on her hip, digging in enough to leave bruises in Raven’s weakened skin. His mind wrapped around hers tighter than a constrictor surrounding its prey. _‘I need you. I’m not letting you go. I’ll hold onto you.’_

_‘YOU WILL LET ME GO. If you try to follow me I’ll cut you off, and you don’t want that to be our last interaction.’_

_‘I’ll follow you anyway,’_ he told her, and there was no denying what he meant.

_‘[Dearest brother elder equal]. There’s still hope for our people. It has to be you.’_

_‘I don’t care.’_

_‘I’m sorry.’_

Charles waited in the dark. When she said no more, he shook her, and when her mind offered only blue fog, he grabbed a lantern and checked for pupil reactivity, grabbed her body and checked for pulses. When he couldn’t wake her with his screams in her head, he buried his face in her chest and _pulled_ with all his might

~ ~ * ~ ~

 

And they woke up.


End file.
